This blog was formerly about the quest of a John to find the 'voluntary prostitute' in the Netherlands. How does a client of prostitutes separate the forced from the voluntary ones? Is it possible? That turns out to be a very difficult question. My current believe is that prostitution can never be regulated and that it would be better if people don't visit prostitutes. I see prostitution as paid sexual harassment, and therefore a human rights violation.

Maggie is a former prostitute and escort madam. She is an American. On her blog she mainly targets the nonsense that you hear in the media about prostitution and forced prostitution. She also tells a lot about her favorite books and movies. I have commented sometimes on her blog (under the name Kris), and she didn't like me, she practically banned me at one point (putting me on permanent moderation). You can read my comments on her blog in this blog post:

I agree with many things she says about the sex industry. It is indeed true what she says that the average age the women enter prostitution is NOT 14 years, like you often hear in the media. And no, working in prostitution is not inherently traumatizing. She is right about that.

But she makes some outlandish claims sometimes too!!! I hate it to directly attack a specific person right on the internet. But, she does it all the time on her own blog, so I think she wouldn’t be bothered if I did it to her. I think she likes a little dialectic.

As I said, I don’t agree with a lot of what she says. For instance, she claims that women who say that they are or were forced to work in prostitution are comparable to people who say they have been abducted by extraterrestrial entities, and they often suffer from false memories because they believe these outlandish stories themselves!

She says: ‘Next time you see one of these “survivor” narratives, compare it to the now-discredited accounts of Satanic ritual abuse and the widely-ridiculed tales of alien medical experiments.’

However, she makes a peculiar exception for Jill Brenneman who went through a similar ordeal of being locked up by a man and having to receive clients for him. You can read Jill Brenneman’s story here:

If she would have been consistent, you would have discarded Jill Brenneman’s story too!!

In one blog post she writes a poem in which she ridicules journalists who buy into the stories of forced prostitutes. She believes that forced prostitutes have reframed their stories under the pressure of social workers. Read it here:

Imagine yourself a teenage streetwalker hauled in by a group of brutal thugs and thrown into a cell, threatened with imprisonment on whatever charges they can dream up…and then a detective or social worker comes in to play “good cop”, telling you that they know you’ve been “trafficked” and are willing to drop all charges – maybe even get you some goodies like a place to live and medical care – if you’ll just tell them the name of the bad men who “forced” you into prostitution. Faced with such a choice, do you honestly believe you’d hesitate to name somebody – anybody – in order to get the deal?

That’s it, that’s the explanation. These forced prostitutes are just fakers. But they have a good reason, it is the only way out of the justice system. I meant it cynically.

In one blog post Maggie denies the existence of the Stockholm Syndrome and she also denies that forced prostitutes could be too afraid to testify against their traffickers (implying that they aren't there). I would say that I don’t agree with that at all!!! I have written about a lot of just these cases on my blog. It is absolutely possible that people side with their oppressors in order to survive or be treated better, or that forced prostitutes are too afraid to go to police. You can read this blog post here:

You can also derive from this blog post, that she is a hardcore libertarian who defends the people’s right to live in slavery. She criticizes the denial of “the agency of those who choose to migrate even when they know or at least suspect their conditions will be harsh”. I understand that she defends the right of people to be treated badly. I believe that it doesn’t therefore give people the right to abuse prostitutes, even if the prostitutes suspected beforehand that they were probably going to be abused.

In one blog post she responds to a reader who asks her if selling one’s daughter is perfectly okay. Here’s the post:

Like many people, you are pretending that sex magically makes everything different. Women whose families pressure them into prostitution are NO DIFFERENT from those who pressure them into any other kind of work, especially in countries like Switzerland and Hungary where prostitution is legal. If it’s “wrong” for a family to push a woman to do sex work, then it’s also “wrong” when she’s pushed to get an office job. So is the average American man a “human trafficker” in your mind? Because most men expect their wives to work nowadays.

Here she has a point, there is also abuse outside the world of prostitution. But in my opinion she compares evil with evil. Perhaps we SHOULD criticize people when they push their children to work! She uses it as a distraction, because it is okay in her opinion when parents or husbands force their children or wives to work in general, it is thus also okay for them to force them to work in prostitution. Here she implicitly defends forced prostitution.

I find it interesting that she denies the voices of prostitutes who say that they have been abused or coerced in prostitution. Generally people in the prostitutes’ rights movement say that we should take seriously what prostitutes say. But in Maggies eyes we should only take the voices of happy hookers seriously.

Don’t get me wrong, some people could lie about being forced prostitutes. And indeed, several of these cases are known. But does that mean that all alleged forced prostitutes lie? There are people who say that they have been in nazi concentration camps or who have fought in the Vietnam war, and then it turns out that they did not. Does it mean that there were no victims in concentration camps and no Vietnam veterans?

Lately, Maggie has said that claiming that there is an ‘epidemic’ of forced prostitution (a.k.a ‘sex trafficking’) is like saying that the moon is made of cheese. She also says this of the theory that men and women are behaviorally very similar (like it is proposed by Janet Shibley Hyde), or that there is some kind of rape culture. She does that here in this blog post:

She has made a cartoon in which a mouse and Alice debate the idea that the moon is made of cheese. The mouse is the defender of the theory that the moon is made of cheese. Alice wants proof, but the mouse isn't interested in proof, because he/she 'believes' in it. The point that Maggie likes to make is that the ideas of behavioral sexual equality, forced prostitution, and rape culture are so outlandish that you don’t have to proof of disprove that it is true or not. You now just by sitting in your armchair that these ideas cannot but true, just like you know beforehand that the moon is not made of cheese or Jupiter made of plywood, or the sun made of candlelight. She claims that if you make such an outlandish claim the burden of proof is on the one who proposes it.

I believe Maggie McNeill has given me a purpose. I want to debunk a lot of what she says. I want to proof that forced prostitutes could really be too afraid to say to the police that they are forced. And… I want to proof that there really is (or at least was) a forced prostitution ‘epidemic’ at least in the Netherlands. I say ‘at least was’ because it could be theoretically true that the situation has improved in the Netherlands during the last few years. But information comes in very slowly, so I don’t want to make claims regarding the present. I have no knowledge of other countries other than the Netherlands though, so I don’t want to make any claims about New Zeeland or Australia for example.

I want to spread out the debunking of Maggies claims over several blog posts. First I like to start with a claim that she makes that ‘only’ 1,5% of the prostitutes are coerced. That is an interesting claim in itself, because didn’t she compare the stories of forced prostitutes with those people who claim they have been abducted by aliens? If she would have been consistent she would claim that NO prostitute is coerced. But I don’t want to blame her. I could be inconsistent at occasions myself. But at least I willing to admit that the world is a fuzzy place, and that I don’t know what to think of sexuality (is it something beautiful, something ugly, or both?), should I visit or should I not visit prostitutes, etc… And I indeed sometimes doubt if there is really a problem of forced prostitution; because ... do the victims lie? There is no definite counterproof, so you can make such a claim and believe it, believe some kind of conspiracy that all alleged forced prostitutes turned out to have made false claims, or that the police just wants to score points. And indeed, there have been some cases where a forced prostitution story turned out to be false. So at one point I started to visit prostitutes again. But this is the direction that Maggie is going, and I want to depart from that direction.

I have collected a lot of evidence on my blog to prove that there is a substantial forced prostitution problem in the Netherlands. So I could just say, read my blog and weep. However, I think I have made the mistake on my blog just to collect information without interpreting it myself. I could just point to an abuse and assume that people would become upset about it, but I slowly became aware that some people would not. There are people called ‘libertarians’ who defend voluntary slavery, and these people are not upset when they hear that a man maltreats a women provided that this women decides to stay with him. In this case it would be consensual, in their opinion. It turns out that a lot of forced prostitutes - despite all the abuse - voluntarily decide to stay with their abusers. This is acceptable to libertarians such as Maggie mcNeill and Laura Agustín, but I like to explain from now on why I believe it is not. It is all about morality.

But first I want to tackle her 1,5% claim. The rest will follow in the future.

First she claims that male pimps showed up only until just before the turn of the 20th century because of the prohibition laws, and that prior to that, prostitution was mainly organized by women. I believe this is correct, but she makes the tacit assumption that therefore the female brothel owners were therefore friendly towards the prostitutes. (She doesn’t say it explicitly however). I have copy-pasted-translated some parts of books (such as by Lotte van de Pol) into the following post on my blog where I describe the situation in the Netherlands in ancient times:

It turns out many prostitutes in the distant past were also exploited, debt-bonded, not allowed to leave the brothel with their sparse clothes, etc...... And all this perpetrated by women. But I don’t want to talk about this issue. Let’s move to the 1,5%. I will quote verbatim from her latest blog post I mentioned about pimps:

Pimps as we now know them did not appear until just before the turn of the 20th century, when the widespread “purity movement” (an outgrowth of early feminism which was also responsible for such brilliant ideas as Prohibition and attempts to prevent little boys from masturbating) pressured legislatures throughout the West (especially in the US) to ban prostitution outright rather than merely seeking to “control” it. Since under these new laws women could in many cities be arrested on suspicion of prostitution for simply walking in the street unescorted, streetwalkers began to employ men either to escort them so as to throw the police off, or to keep a lookout at the ends of streets so the whores could rush inside when the cops showed up. And when a whore was busted despite precautions, a male contact who held some of her money could arrange bail. In other words, the first true pimps appeared as a direct result of the criminalization of prostitution, which puts modern “anti-pimping laws” on shaky moral ground indeed. Sadly, this is not the only time in which the government’s excuse for some tyrannical law is the suppression of a problem which would not exist but for other tyrannical laws. If prostitution were not illegal there would be no need for pimps, and the streetwalkers who keep pimps only do so because they fear the cops more.

Even among streetwalkers, though, the stereotyped abusive pimp is fairly rare. American studies show that fewer than half of all streetwalkers have pimps, and of those that do the majority of them control the pimps rather than the other way around. The English Collective of Prostitutes estimates that fewer than 10% of English streetwalkers are encumbered by a “heavy ponce” (abusive pimp) and French estimates are lower still, about 5% of streetwalkers. Using the English estimate as a median between the higher American and lower French figures, and applying it to our standard 15% estimate of the percentage of all whores who are streetwalkers, we arrive at a figure of roughly 1.5% of all Western prostitutes who are controlled by pimps. This is a far cry from the “vast majority” claimed by the anti-whore propagandists who infest government and the feminist movement, and similar to most estimates of the number of women with abusive husbands or boyfriends.

To summarize: she surmises that only street prostitutes have pimps, that 15% of the prostitutes work in street prostitution, and that roughly 10% of the street prostitutes have pimps, and that therefore as a whole 1,5% of the prostitutes in general have pimps. I think conservative statisticians would criticize her decuction, because she extrapolates from France and Great Britain to the rest of the Western world. But I believe as an educated guess it suffices. It also relieves me myself of sticking to strict statistical principles. I just take data from the Netherlands and extrapolate it to the rest of the Western world.

In the Netherlands the large majority of forced prostitution cases are not related to street prostitution, but happen indoors. It is important because that makes her initial guess of 1,5% of Western prostitutes who are controlled by pimps potentially a lot larger! How much larger remains to be speculated about; is it 5 times larger, 10 times larger, 2 times larger, 20 times larger?

But luckily we have data from the Netherlands! I believe nowadays forced prostitution cases in street prostitution is really rare, but in the past it happened somewhat more often in that sector of prostitution. I will take data from the past because the situation of today seems to be special because lots of tolerance zones for street prostitutes have been closed down. Street prostitutes aren’t really tolerated nowadays in the Netherlands. So I will take data from the past, start from Maggies 1,5%, estimate the percentage of forced prostitutes who work indoors, and then guess the number of forced prostitutes using the 1,5% as a guideline.

I take the yearly report (Jaarverslag 2006) of Comensha (a.ka. the Foundation Against Trafficking in Women) of the year 2006 (see page 8):

44 of the 549 reported victims of human trafficking (these were all reports, also by social workers) allegedly worked in street prostitution. But not all human trafficking is prostitution-related so I remove the non-prostitution cases. That leaves 311 cases. 44 of 311 is 14,1%.

The second report of the Nationaal Rapporteur Mensenhandel also contains some numbers regarding finished police investigations. You can read it here (see page 54, table 4.17):

There were 111 cases during the period 1997-2001. In 14% of the cases also street prostitution was involved. In 56% also window prostitution was involved, in 52% clubs/brothels were involved, and in 15% also escort prostitution was involved. The problem here is that multiple victims could be involved in one single investigation, and one single investigation could cover multiple sectors. But I think the 14% figure roughly confirms the number that I derived from the year 2006.

Okay, let’s guess that 14% of the forced prostitutes work in street prostitution in the whole Western world, that would mean 86% of the forced prostitutes work indoors. That means that there are roughly 6 times more indoor forced prostitutes than street prostitutes. As a whole there are roughly 7 times more forced prostitutes than Maggy initially surmises, assuming only street prostitutes could be forced to work in prostitution. 1,5% times 7 is roughly 10,5%. Let’s say 10%. I think this is a realistic estimate. I have made other attempts in the past to arrive at an estimate and then I roughly arrive at this number. Perhaps it is 20%, 15%, or something. I notice that forced prostitutes are often young and often Eastern European prostitutes are involved. Many forced prostitutes work on de Wallen in Amsterdam. So I could do something with that. Just look at my blog to find more. Especially the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Read my FAQ here:

If 10% of the prostitutes are forced, suddenly forced prostitution isn’t such a rare phenomenon anymore, if at least you think 1,5% is rare. If you say 10% of the prostitutes are forced than I believe you can speak definitely of an epidemic. It is always difficult to determine what you believe is a lot, are what you consider that be rare. It is all subjective. In the Netherlands an epidemic is defined as when more than 51 of every 100000 people are affected by a particular illness. That’s roughly half a percentage. So even Maggies 1,5% is above that! So we really have a forced prostitution epidemic in the (Western) world.

Case closed. There is more to come, stay tuned. This is just part 1 (I hope).

48 comments:

Wouw. This has convinced me that I need to write a post in english about traffick. I have already written a lot but in spanish, and many readers say that I'm mad for negating the sex traffick.

In fact, I don't say it's a lie. It's true that millions of men and women are raped, imprisioned and sent to other countries against their will. It has been an extremely common phenomenon that it's called DEPORTATIONS. Yeah. The traffickers are our own governments. And you and me and everybody else are supporting those mafias paying taxes.

Now, let's talk about Maggie. I don't agree with her politic of moderation of comments (if it's true what u say), but she has the right to do it. I have been heavily attacked in my blog by abolitionists and traffick myth supporters. But as I don't fear the truth, I'm open to all their comments. Same doesn't happen in the other direction, I'm permanent and sistematically banned both from abolitionists and "pro rights" webs just to say what I'm seeing.

I have been with many women that police has "liberated". With genuine traffick victims, sex slaves, prostituted women. Yep. At least as the media depicts them... bcause the story they tell me it's SO DIFFERENT...

Not just me, but also social workers, univeristy investigators of lawyers that have spoken with the girls have found that what they most fear are the authorities. But they will just tell u if they know u aren't one of them and that u'll not do anything stupid (like speak with the police). I spent several months speaking daily with prostitutes before one of them told me she had to pay police to let her work. Later many others told me the same. Donkey, I'm not speaking of what I think. I'm speaking of what I have seen and heard.

Actually, I think that around 90% of streetwalkers are coerced by police (I have a video in spanish in wich a prostitute says that). In fact, I have invited ppl that says I'm a liar to meet the prostitutes I know. They all have refused my offer. But I'd like to meet personally the trafficked girls. Abolitionist have never presented one, just mannequins.

Of course here there are also testimonies of forced prostitutes, but they are so incredible and the lies so evident that it's impossible to believe them. I think that just the most ignorant and stupid persons can really trust those tales. Please, go back to the streets and MEET PROSTITUTES. This way you'll find why everyone that really has known this world is against the forced prostitution myth. It's not just a lie, it's an interested one built up by police to cover their illegalities.

No, I would better not visit prostitutes again, it is like binding to cat to the bacon.

But you do acknowledge that 90% of the prostitutes are coerced! Only, it is done by the police. I think that Spain must have a very corrupt police, which is very worrisome, also knowing that Spain is one of the richest and most civilized countries in the world. The difference is that what the Spanish police does to prostitutes is normally done by local criminals. So, basically, the local mafia in Spain is the police. But it exactly proves my point; what Maggie McNeill and Laura Agustín and others say that forced prostitution is rare is simply not true. And you have proven it in the case of Spain: 90% of the prostitutes are coerced..... by the Spanish police.

Oh fuck u don't understand! See, I'm happy if u want to debunk the "myth of voluntary prostitution". So, get out of your home and go to the streets. If not, I don't know how u are going to proof ur point of view. Really I want u to know prostitutes, not just go with them to fuck when u are so hot that u can't hold. No, become a friend of them, right? Gain their trust so they can speak freely with u as "regulationists" have done.

Grils I have met here were in many cases in other countries. They told me they had to pay police in Romania. But also in Italy. Or in Denmark. Also in Ireland. Of France. Too in Netherlands.

How can't u realize that ALL OVER THE WORLD THE PROBLEM IS THE SAME. Public powers will never act in benefit of the citizenship because their nature is contrary of our welfare. All criminals are of their own country, here they pay spanish police but there they pay to dutch police. There is no escape. As Benjamin Franklin said, there are just two sure things in life: to die and to pay taxes. We just want to pay those taxes legally, to use law to protect us from the government. Yeah, the principle of liberalism.

Girls, I've told u, are corced. Ok, we agree. But NOT to work in prostitution but to pay our authorities to let them work. It's a very different history. I don't want girls to leave prostitution. But also I don't want them to stop paying police. I just want the taxation to be recognized and legal, that's all. Not any change in what it's happening. Just that the law accepts reality, and that public powers work under the legality (of what is called rule of law, we call it "Estado de Derecho").

I keep saying that forced prostitution is rare to non-existent, that is what all people that really know prostitution have found. But... why abolitionists NEVER talk about police extortions? Many prostitutes complain that that is their first problem: Norma Jean Almodovar, Angela Villón Bustamante, Gabriela De Silva Leite, Sonia Sánchez (one of the few abolitionist prostitutes), and almost all I have personally met.

Donkey, I really cannot understand ur blindness. U are recognizing that u don't know the world of prostitution but u are also saying that u haven't the intention to discover it. Are u saying that u are a happy ignorant?

"Cops like to believe that nearly all of us have “pimps”, -men who dominate and control us, beating us up and taking our money- because it lets them pretend they aren’t the chief danger in our lives"

"I find it terribly ironic that modern police tend to be so sanctimonious about pimps when they in fact were the first men to use violence to control and exploit whores, and even today tend to be a much greater danger to those at every level of the profession"

"Controlling pimps who steal whores’ money and give them nothing in return really aren’t that rare after all; they just have government plates on their pimpmobiles and wear uniforms or judicial robes rather than garish outfits with silly hats"

WHY THE HELL U CAN'T ACCEPT EVIDENCE? EVERYWHERE U GO, YOU'LL SEE THE SAME. I DIDN'T KNOW MAGGIE, WHY DO U THINK THAT WHAT WE SAY IS SO SIMILAR? IT'S JUST A CONSPIRATION, OUR DREAMS?

And how do you know that police extortion will stop with decriminalization. The police could still extort people if they want to, even during decriminalization. And also, what I understand is that prostitution is not illegal in Spain and that it has a very tolerant brothel climate. Only pimping is illegal but this law is tacitly ignored in Spain. De facto, prostitution is already decriminalized in Spain. Just as it was in the Netherlands for several decades. Before legalization you could very easily open a brothel anywhere in the Netherlands without being bothered by the government, you were simply condoned. Actually, since legalization prostitution is more strictly regulated. And during this de facto decriminalization period, there is evidence that the situation regarding exploitation and coercion was even WORSE than it is now!!!

But I have some questions for you.

You told about prostitutes being extorted in the Netherlands by the police. I want some details: where and how and why?

And some other questions because I do not believe that you never met such prostitutes:

-Have you never met a prostitute who was pushed or coerced to work in prostitution by a boyfriend, husband or somebody else?-Have you never met a prostitute who agreed to hand over all money to a boyfriend or manager so that he/she could save it for the prostitute, and then it turns out that the money is gone?-Have you never met a prostitute who gives all her money to her boyfriend and then after a while she finds out he has more girls working for him in prostitution?-Have you never met a prostitute who has to hand over a disproportionate amount of money to intermediaries merely because such intermediaries have made an account for her on a sexsite, or because they arranged with a brothel owner that the prostitute could work in that particular brothel, etc….????-Have you never met a prostitute who does her work while being clearly disgusted by what’s she’s doing?

I simply don’t believe that you have never met such prostitutes, or perhaps the situation in Spain is completely different. Or you see it as acceptable that such things happen to prostitutes (like libertarians do).

Gracias Cliente X for taking this person to task. Donkey's reply to your comment shows how trafficking 'fanatics' will take any anecdotal evidence and twist it around to conform to their uninformed idea of other people's reality.

And FYI Señor Donkey, police blackmail sex workers everywhere, even in the first of First-World Nations like the USA. It is not indicative of how developed a nation is. It only shows how irresistibly easy it is to take advantage of a group of people marginalized i.e. made illegal in worker status by the law. In the minds of people like you, 'prostitutes shouldn't exist' so they couldn't possibly be doing it unless they've been 'coerced' to sell sexual favors. This does not explain your police coercion theory -- the police are blackmailing sex workers the world over, NOT forcing them to sell sex.

If we reduce power of government, it will have less opportunities to damage us. That's the main idea I support.

I don't want police or politicians to disappear, but to work for our behalf and not against us. It's the same what happened historically when first constitutions were signed: they wanted a change from an absolute state in which there were not juridical security (this is a roughly translation from spanish, maybe in english has another name, I mean that public powers should not be able to do with you whaterver they want) to another one, a Liberal State, in which a base of fundamental rights were assured to every citizen: no matter if u were rich or poor, clever or stupid, men on women, EVERY PEOPLE THE SAME for the law. Against differences, liberalism brought the equality. Or at least it tried.

Well, thats what I want. That anyone will not be treated worse just to work in prostitution, and that our authorities don't abuse and misuse their power specially over the weakest collectives on our society. I think this idea could be supported not just by liberals, but also by socialists, christians and anyone that supports a democratic state. Only the worst kind of collectivists can defend the existence of abuses.

Spain, believe it or not, officially is abolitionist since in 1962 (under the regime of dictator General Francisco Franco, that we call "Tío Paco" or "El enano cabrón" -translated "Uncle Paco" and "Asshole midget") signed the Treaty of Lake Sucess (against trafficking and prostitution and blah, blah, blah). Not was until 1995 that all kinds of prostitution were decriminalized here, and a law of 1970 that allowed authorities to send prostitutes and hosexuals (Law of danger and social reinserction) was passed out. But the penal code of 1995 was modified twice, first on 1999 and then on 2003. Since last modification, the non-coercitive pimping is also a crime. This allows police to extort all business, because what they are doing (getting profit from prostitution) is a crime. So our authorities are using legality to commit illegalities. Wonderful. Moreover, streetwalkers are blackmailed because anyone whi lives with them is accused by pimping: relatives, boyfriend, other prostitutes...

Of course we don't want a regulation like the one in Holland. We don't want a law to control prostitution. We want a law to control administration. Like I said u was the purpose of Constitutions: to control the public powers and allow them to do just limited things. Remember that the first one, the Carta Magna of Lackland John of 1215, was a daring attempt to stop the arbitrary authority of the despot. We want same as them or the liberals that signed the American Constitution of 1776: to end the abuses of the tyrans.

-Have you never met a prostitute who was pushed or coerced to work in prostitution by a boyfriend, husband or somebody else?Coerced not, but pushed (If u mean introduced) yeah! Sometimes by even their sisters or other relatives, bcause they find prostitution is a good work. DO u think this is bad, sth that must be considereed a crime?

-Have you never met a prostitute who agreed to hand over all money to a boyfriend or manager so that he/she could save it for the prostitute, and then it turns out that the money is gone?I've found girls that trusted a bf that only wanted their money, If that is what u mean. But same, I had once a gf that all that wanted for me was my money (I was working all day while she was idle). Does that makes her my pimp? Sometimes we can think that ppl makes wrong choice, but are theirs. I think u can give them an advice, of course, but there is no reason to use public violence. Lies are not unusual in couples, btw, have u ever had a couple?

-Have you never met a prostitute who gives all her money to her boyfriend and then after a while she finds out he has more girls working for him in prostitution?No. All her money, no. I've find that two girls had the same bf, and that one of them was so mad that tough that she could buy his love with money. Of course he was abusing of her, but as other girls said "that girl was stupid". Stupidity is not a disease, and u as a free man have all you right to be a stupid. It's ur choice.

It's like u. U say that Miss McNeill is wrong but at the same time u don't want to proof in the reality ur theorities. This is really stupid, but hey it's ur choice. How the hell can u demonstrate anything if u refuse to use proof? By faith?

-Have you never met a prostitute who has to hand over a disproportionate amount of money to intermediaries merely because such intermediaries have made an account for her on a sexsite, or because they arranged with a brothel owner that the prostitute could work in that particular brothel, etc….????Many whorehouses work here at what we call "a pachas" (fifty-fifty). Half of the money the punter pays, goes to the house. I don't know how percentage can u call "disproportionate", but fyi I had jobs in which the company I was working for got 75% of profit of my job. Ok, there are ppl living of the prostitutes, I got the point of ur questions. Thats real, I cannot negate it. But, aren't many ppl making a lot of cash of many other workers? Why is worst to get money from a prostitute than from a cab driver, for example?

-Have you never met a prostitute who does her work while being clearly disgusted by what’s she’s doing?Yes. Let me ask u sth in return. Have you ever met anyone (bricklayer, cleaner, cashier...) who does her work while being clearly disgusted by what’s she’s doing?

Ppl does not work to enjoy. Me the first, I'd like to be all day watching movies for example. But this is not the way our world works.

So I want to understand why u don't use the same logic that u employ with prostitution with all the other jobs. Do u think that anyone who does not enjoy with his/her job has been trafficked and has a pimp?

Moreover, u can SOMETIMES love ur job and SOMETIMES hate it. This happens to me and everyone. For example I'm sure that with sth like u as client, it's normal for a sex worker to be disgusted. Or do u think that they are the same with everyone? They are persons, not robots. With some clients, they enjoy (I assure u). And with others, they don't want even to see them. Have u tough anytime that maybe the problem that prostitutes are disgusted when they have sex with you is not THEIR problem but YOURS?

I suppose the anonymous to be Maggie's. Thank u very much for ur words, it's always nice to find how same evidence is found everywhere u go and that sex workers words and those of their clients go in same direction.

But over all, I thank u to use spanish words, "señorita" :-D

Donkey is not like the trafficking fanatics, but a nice person very introverted and with problems (as he has recognized). He just is ignorant. Abolitionists are clever, and evil.

I think that Maggie has explained how this world of prostitution works simply and easily. Coercion is not, as usually its said, to work in prostitution. Prostitutes sell sex beause then want I can say in the 99'99% of the cases. BUT what they don't want is to PAY for the right to do it, same as us: we all work bcause we want (sometimes in better or worse jobs, but we are not forced to take that job unless u think that need of living and pay bills is a coercion) but we are FORCED to pay taxes against our bill just to mantain a bunch of parasites called politicians and their henchmen. Oh, of course that there are pimps. We have three million of pimps (public employees) in our country. I'm a victim, I need salvation from them, can u help me PLEASE OF PLEASE?

What a reactions! Only because of that, I have no time to write my part 2 right now.

To anonymous (of whom I doubt that it is Maggie, she would have said that):

I just wonder what the difference would be when prostitution is decriminalized. There’s still money out there so why not take it? Police officers and criminals could still go to brothels and prostitutes to extort them. That’s at least what happens in Amsterdam on De Wallen, despite prostitution being legal. Look, they are easy prey, just these young and gullible girls who are scared shitless of these vicious criminals.

In my opinion extortion also means coercion. Because, when the prostitutes have to hand over money due to extortion, they have to work longer to make ends meet. And often the extorters also push prostitutes to work longer. This is definitely a violation of the bodily integrity.

I have an option: I notice that the earlier abolitionists like Kathleen Barry also wanted to decriminalize prostitution. So clients are decriminalized, prostitutes decriminalized, brothels decriminalized. Only, the men shouldn’t visit prostitutes (although it is not forbidden to do it in this case) and then prostitution would disappear. Poverty is solved separately. I think this is a fantastic solution! Only later Kathleen Barry changed her position to client criminalization, because if you want to stop men from visiting prostitutes, why not criminalize them? (in her opinion) I think the earlier abolitionists like Kathleen Barry are okay. Obviously I don’t want prostitutes to be harassed or locked up. I believe clients should not visit prostitutes, and the government should offer prostitutes a way out by offering them welfare and debt relief. Then the pimps(/police) will lose their income. I believe when you notice the presence prostitutes in a particular society then this society has failed. The large majority of prostitutes do this work as a last resort, to let their bodies be touched against their will in exchange for money. It is an indication that society cannot care properly for the poor and weak.

To Cliente X:

I believe it is indecent to push a person to work in prostitution, because this work is so enormously degrading. It means that you have no respect for this person when you offer him/her this job. As a matter of fact, I believe pushing a person to do any kind of work is immoral.

Client X, so indeed you have met prostitutes who work for their boyfriends. These women are being cheated upon and this is clearly illegal. Cheating is not allowed!! But in libertarianism this is allowed because it is ‘consensual’; a person has the right to be tricked if they have consented to the swindle beforehand. What you say exactly proves my point; you have actually met prostitutes who have abusive pimps, only you don’t recognize it because these women decide to stay with these boyfriends. Is this what we call freedom?

What worries me about the prostitutes is that they often have to hand over money to intermediaries outside of their regular employer: the brothel owner. Many Eastern European prostitutes have a 50%/50% arrangement with intermediaries. So: they hand over 50% to the brothel owner, and 50% of the rest to the intermediaries. But often they don’t make much money at all! So for instance, they have 5 clients a day and have earned 50 euro per client, that’s 250 euro. But they have to pay 150 euro for the window rent. That leaves 100 euro per day. Then they have to hand over 50 euro to the intermediaries! And then they also live in a house for which they have to pay like 1500 euro per month. What do they earn? Nothing, they sometimes even build up a debt! It is so pitiful. And yes, it happens in other sectors of the economy too. But this is not justifiable in my opinion. Thou shall not compare evil with evil!! The exploitation outside of prostitution should stop too!!

Then to the point of prostitutes having the right not to love their job. I think it is still pitiful that they have to have unwanted sex with strangers. Their job description in that case becomes in fact: being sexually harassed in exchange for money.

But I know, I’m very hypocritical because I visit prostitutes myself. I have unfortunately met a couple of these visibly unwilling prostitutes, which was really embarrassing, and pitiful. One of them uttered a deep sigh when I offered her to change to doggystyle. One of them even seemingly tried to prevent me from getting inside of her when I wanted to fuck her doggystyle. I’m sorry, but I had the gut feeling that I was raping a person. But I have also met very friendly and open-minded prostitutes, so they exist too. But they are rare.

Oh by the way, I am a communist, and I believe a state has the moral duty to take care of the weak.

We said we don’t just want decriminalization. What we want is a LAW to enforce the public powers to act under legality. How to stop extortions? If they have no legal mechanisms to extort, for example not allowing them to enter the brothels without judicial order (as happens here with a directive of the Civil Guard) or not punishing non-coercitive pimping, they would find much more difficult to cover their extortions. Also it’s needed a separation and control of power, for example having just one police for all territory (we have several different police forces: from the state, regions (just some of ‘em), cities and other for rural areas. I’d be better to have one and better police force, which could send the policemen to a different area each time to avoid corruption. Moreover, instead to be two agents each time, there should be three, being one of them not from police but from the judicial power with the order to control the other two policemen. The members of this trio would also be different each time. That’s control of administration, what we need.

Right now, I think that policemen don’t extort girls by their own desire but from order from the public powers. It’d be a fantastic way to get taxation without control, and this would explain why almost any political party in Spain is for legalization while there is a wide feeling in society in favor of it. But I recognize this is a theory as I have no proofs of it.

I agree with u, extortion is coercion. So we want to stop the extortion, but it is not necessary linked to prostitution. We want prostitution without extortion. It’s the same the example of the China trip u made: u agreed to go to China, not to be robbed. Does this mean that if u go to China is right to be robbed? No, u didn’t want it. U wanted to go China AND not get robbed. Same happens to prostitutes. They want to work BUT not to be extorted. I think it’s easy to understand.

First abolitionists were real feminists and wanted freedom for prostitutes, like Josephine Butler. Regulations were made to control prostitutes and not to recognize rights, we don’t want those regulations (but of course I prefer those regulations if happen, like now, to be legal that illegal). Problem with prostitution are the profits made, how can u tell to the police (or even politicians, as I suspect) to lose a huge way of income not controlled at all? Don’t be so innocent, administration will only lose some power if obligated. That’s our work, to dominate the beast.

Ur impression that many pros are in this as a last resort it’s true… in the beginning. Later they find this job to be much better than expected (U have many studies of this at ur disposal, as the one called “Ciudad Nocturna” (Night City) from the CATS (Collective on Support of the Sexual Workers, from Murcia-Spain). I already told u that “let their bodies to be touched” it’s not at all a problem for many of them.

So, as u find degrading this work, it should not exist. Ok. Let’s suppose I’m a fascist (of course not, I suppose u have noticed that I have a political point of view not so far from the one defended by Maggie and Laura) and I think that Jews, gypsies and communists like u should not exist. Perrrfect, don’t u think? Donkey, if u want respect to ur life and beliefs, please respect the other ppl. I really think that communism it’s an aberration, the only ideology that has caused even more deaths than the abominable Nazism. But I’m not for banning the communism. When u say u are against prostitution what I understand is that u are against freedom. I don’t defend prostitution just to be a client. I defend all freedoms bcause I’m a democrat, of course I love bitches but over all I LOVE LIBERTIES.

I repeat u, not all prostitutes with bf are being cheated. Why do u think that? In fact, several times I had as a gf a SW. DOES THIS MEAN I’M HER PIMP? This is what says our police. Libertarians go one step forward liberals and think public powers have no place in a society. In theory, I agree with ‘em. But I’m a pragmatic persons who knows that there are so many collectivists in our world and that a libertarian paradise it’s utopist. So all I want, for now, it’s to control the public powers even if they have HUGE attributions. Not liberals or libertarians agree with cheating, it can be an agreement, but it’s a pact corrupted in its origins. It’s not a real, valid agreement. Ask ANY liberal u know.

We agree in that girls working on prostitution get too few money for theirs. That’s problem, not the prostitution itself. Prostitutes that have worked on window prostitution think thay window rent is too high, do u want to help em? Go to the town hall and convince them to low the prize of even get free windows for the “poor, innocent, exploited prostitutes”. A solution to help them directly is as easy as that.

About their job. U have been with prostitutes so u know that nobody abuses of them. They decide which practices to do, if there is sth they don’t want to, they will refuse. I’m right or not? If they were violated, could they refuse?

There is a way to feel u better and also help prostitutes. I’ll give u an advice. Visit prostitutes but NOT to fuck them. What u really need is to know more about them, so invite em to go with u and drink a coffee (I don’t know if it’s possible en window prostitution, here with streetwalkers it is). Go to speak with em, to know more about their lives, how they feel and which kind of problems they have (of course, if u have not enough social abilities or u are a complete stranger, u’ll need to pay as if were an usual service).

Btw, when I was younger I was also communist and had very noble feelings… until I understand what was really communism. I know I can’t change ur mind now, but the most social system is capitalism. As W.Churchill said, ”The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue ofsocialism is the equal sharing of misery”. We have a very similar quote here in Spain, “a los socialistas les gustan tanto los pobres que no paran de crearlos”, translated “socialists like so much poor people that they don’t stop to create them”.

You misunderstand, I never have been to China. But I have read about a person who was in China, and he was robbed or had a car accident or something, and then he complained to the police about it, and the police said: “then you shouldn’t have come to China.” This is libertarianism in it’s true form. If you sign a contract or make a decision or consent to something, then all that happens to you as a result of that choice or consent is also part of that choice or consent. You see, in libertarianism you even have the right to give up all your rights! You have the right to consent to become a slave and to be treated as such. But that’s what happens to those prostitutes who have made the initial choice to work in prostitution, but who happen to be threatened, raped, sexually harassed, etc….. But for a libertarian this is okay because when they initially consented or chose to work in prostitution they have given up the right to be protected against sexual intimidation, extortion, threats etc….

I think that’s what all the fuzz is all about when people who defend prostitution (often libertarians) deny the existence or the extent of forced prostitution. They simply point to the initial consent and that’s it. You can also see that in the writings of the Dutch ex-prostitute Jo Doezema. She simply points to reports (such as the TAMPEP field reports or the reports written by Marjan Wijers) which show that the prostitutes initially knew their fate. And that’s it!!! That’s her proof. She doesn’t look at circumstances or how they are treated. All that matters is consent. This is also what I see in you. You just see it as normal when people are cheated by their lovers, or when people dislike their work.

Not all prostitutes have abusive boyfriends. I think about 10-20% of prostitutes in the Netherlands are somehow exploited, extorted, deceived or coerced. Happy hookers do exist. And not all prostitutes are bothered by being touched intimately by strange men. They shouldn’t be bothered. But I think as a client you just don’t know. Not all is what it seems. Who is the free one? Who is the forced one? Who likes her work? Who hates her work?

I really regret that I have visited prostitutes, but I want to better my life definitely. I haven’t visited a prostitute for almost 5 months. And I make another attempt to become an asexual. I haven’t watched porn, visited camgirls or masturbated for over 12 days. When no man visits a prostitute, the problems in the sex industry will completely vanish. I just want to change my life completely and not fall back into sexual abuse and sadomasochism again.

I indeed think that the prostitutes in the window prostitutes pay a too high amount of rent. I think this is because the window brothel owners make secret price agreements. It is interesting to see that about 30% of the windows are not rented out, so an oversupply of prostitutes is not the explanation for the too high prices. I believe that the government doesn’t do something about it because they believe in the free market. I believe I have read that somewhere. I think indeed the government has to fix the prices, or perhaps the brothel owners could be brought to court because they make price agreements (if it’s possible to prove anyway).

What you say about communism is true. Nearly all communist states are or were fascist dictatorships who killed tens of millions of people. (The exception is perhaps the state of Kerjala in India.) But this is because the system of communism was enforced from above. I believe in bottom-up communism. The people must support it themselves. (Just as in Kerjala, where many people voted for the communist party).

I want to know about the prostitutes who have been extorted by the Dutch police. You forgot to tell about that.

Ok, I uderstand ur point. U need to be responsible or ur actions. IE, when C. Kirschner expropiated YPF from Repsol, then the guilty was of Repsol bcause it decided to invest in a country without juridical security and socialist government like Argentina.

I think that u are not all right but also u are not all wrong. Truly, there are some actions with consequences. Altough u don't want to, u can PROVOKE some reactions to ur actions (have an accident, get robbed...) BUT I don't think that prostitution MUST be linked to become extorted. It's undeniable that if u make business with liars, probably u'll be robbed. U are right. But, why u have to be blackmailed just to work in prostitution?

I deny existence of forced prostitution by one big reason. I have been many yrs in this world, meeting not just prostitutes but also many other people studying this reality and NO ONE has found a "sexual slave". Evidence destroys theorys. Thats same reason I don't believe in Santa Claus, u can't prove it. For me, trafficked girls as media depicts are so real as Rudolph the reindeer. Find me them and I'll believe. I don't know how u'll do it, if u say that u will quit whoring. See, I really don't pay for sex a lot. Many times i'm with the girls as a friend, I go to their home to watch TV, we go to have a lunch in a restaurant, we take a walk or go shopping. Problem with u is that prostitution is not part of ur reality, it's still sth dark and unknown. Only way to know more about this reality is to comer closer to it. But u don't want to.

The way to avoid both high window rent and police extortions would be easy: less regulation (for example, let girls to work on streets, or liberalize windows business), less police (of course I'm not saying to eliminate police, but to use it in what they are needed: prosecute real criminals, protect citizensih and public buidings) and less government. In a free society we would have free prostitutes.

Thank u very much for letting me to comment in such an interesting blog. I hope u finish the part 2 os this post soon, I'm willing to read it.

Yeah, I'm speaking about reality and all u post are fairies tales. See, I'm not against trafficked women like I can't be against dragons, werevolves or God. They simply don't exists. The evidence u have shown to prove ur affirmations is the same that creationists have to fight against evolution. All u have are tales! Do u realize how inconsistent are ur positions?

I'm so sorry I posted that link four times! It didn't look like it posted, so I kept trying again.

I would be interested in your response to what Rachel says on her blog. It is such a refreshing change to Maggie McNeill's toxic blog. I'm glad that someone is calling her out on her insanity. I slogged through her blog, but didn't find most of those choice bits you quote, which was helpful in cementing her pro-trafficking position. I myself has a fight with her on her blog and was banned. I knew I would be banned, but before being banned I got her to spit out her venom and contradict herself and invalidate all of her own points without realizing she was doing so. She is not really so clever it seems. And she really doesn't speak like a prostitute, but more like a imp, which she was for many years.

Then I found your blog while trying to find if anyone had anything to say about this venomous, untruthful pimp Maggie McNeill, and found that I was moved by your attempt to have an open discussion with Maggie about what to do about an addiction to seeing prostitutes who may have been trafficked. Unlike Maggie who tells you that you are sick and need help, Rachel engages in real discussions with men who are questioning their desires and actions regarding prostitutes.

I have looked at Rachel Moran’s website a bit. I read her last post about the open letter to the “good punter”, and the comments following it. Perhaps it applies to me. She describes that clients don’t understand that prostitutes don’t like it to be hugged or caressed by these men. They only do it because they are paid to do it. The prostitutes hate the arms of clients around them more than their penises ever could.

Lately I regularly visit only one prostitute. She is very friendly and we do the things that Rachel describes. We hug and caress each other a lot. Every now and then she pinches my cheek with her fingers as if I am a small child. And I do it to her in return. It is very funny. We talk a lot to each other. If I just ignore other very negative experiences with prostitutes (I actually met a lot of prostitutes who very visibly hated everything they did), I would say that prostitution is very friendly. Not evil at all. I don’t have the feeling that I’m doing something wrong. Okay, one exception. Lately she was on vacation for three weeks, and she wasn’t used to intercourse anymore. So when I inserted my penis into her vagina she said: OUCH!!!! And then she explained that because of her holiday she wasn’t used to it anymore. I forgot to apologize and I only said: “REALLY?”. And I just continued. I feel a bit bad about that.

But otherwise the situation is all very friendly. I would say that she even likes me. She confides a lot of things to me. For instance, she talks about her finances, about how much the tax department gave back to her, etc…. Once I wanted to leave, but she stopped me and continued talking with me.

But if I must understand Rachel Moran, this is all part of the deception. So in reality she hates everything what I do with her, and her thoughts are the same as Rachel Moran’s thoughts: “The truth, that you’re so desperate to flee from, is that you are just like a gentle rapist. Your attitude and demeanour does not mitigate what you do. The damage you’re causing is incalculable, but you tell yourself you’re doing no harm here, and you use the smiles of the women you buy as some kind of currency; they allow you to buy your own bullshit. I would know; I doled out that currency many times, and we both were that, we both doled out currency in different ways, you and me.

You came along because you wanted to spend what you had to spend, your load, which also meant your money; and you looked at me and you touched me and you fucked me and then you held me. That was always the worst part. I want you to know that. That was always the worst part.

I didn’t want to be held by you. I didn’t want to be cuddled. I didn’t want you close to me, never mind inside me. Your arms around me made me want to puke more than your penis ever did. I shut out that part; it was too horrible. Every moment with you was a lie, and I hated every second of it. And you bought that lie; believe me it was a lie you bought. I know, because I sold it.”

Back to Maggie McNeill. I find her waaay to radical. But she is not the only one. I notice that over time pro-prostitution and anti-prostitution groups have radicalized. During the seventies these two groups were much closer to each other. The pro-prostitution group acknowledged that prostitution indeed is oppressive, but they emphasized the right of women to choose what to do with their bodies. The anti-prostitution groups emphasized the right of women not to work in prostitution, and looked for ways to help women out of prostitution. Ironically both groups supported decriminalization of prostitution.

Now the groups are far apart. Pro-prostitution groups in the past didn’t deny there was a lot of exploitation and coercion in the world of prostitution. They sought ways to improve the situation of prostitutes. But nowadays, many of them deny the existence of exploitation and coercion in the first place. Or they believe coercion or exploitation to be irrelevant. The modern pro-prostitution people are strongly influenced by libertarianism. Maggie McNeill and Laura Agustín are such persons. Libertarians are generally not interested in labour conditions. They believe you always must respect the choice of a person. If a person decides to work in a factory or brothel where the circumstances are absolutely horrendous and where they are awfully mistreated by the staff and clients, then libertarians view this merely as the choice of the worker, and we have absolutely no right to criticize this choice of a person. HOW DARE WE INTERFERE!!!!!! After all, the prostitutes or workers could have decided to work somewhere else, don’t they?

The anti-prostitution people have also radicalized. Now they want to criminalize all clients, even in exceptional situations where the contact between a prostitute and a client was not abusive. And they often provide bogus information about the sex industry. You often hear them talking about the average age of entry into prostitution being 15 years! That is absolutely false. And they often refer to research done by Melissa Farley who has mainly interviewed street prostitutes. Or they talk about tens of thousands of sex trafficking victims being trafficked to the Olympic games. Anti-prostitution people have a tendency to paint prostitution much darker than it really is. True, it is all very dark and abusive. But you mustn’t exaggerate!

By the way, are you ASmallNotch? You were put on permanent moderation on Maggie McNeill´s blog, you criticize libertarianism, and you are an experienced Battlefield 3 player. And you also have your own blog in which you review some games.

No, I was wrong. You are probably SilkyVelvet, and so you are probably a girl.

Yes, Maggie McNeill talks very casually about rape. As if it is just a normal part of life. I think this is a survival strategy for prostitutes. The only choice prostitutes have is to accept rape as a part of life, and not to worry about it too much, or else it will overwhelm them. For you it was totally unexpected, and it made a deep impression. I think for Maggie it is something she was mentally prepared for. I think this is her strategy to cope with it.

I'm glad that you looked at Rachel Moran's blog and got a different perspective. You say you "hope" the prostitute you are with does not feel like that. I would say that her "ouch" and your response to it should tell you a lot. This cements the fact that she has no right to refuse you, and that you have the right to continue in spite of her discomfort. That's far from human beings sharing an equal experience. If you ever want to be sure that a woman is really consenting, then you have to only have sex with non-professionals (which I gather you have already decided to do).

I am not Silky Velvet. But I am a "girl." I've done a lot of research lately on sex trafficking, and I've realized with some shock that there is ample evidence that the numbers are not exaggerated at all. I think where they come up with that figure of 14 or 15 years old is when they average out the children who start at 5 or 6 years. I've now read many accounts of victims from abusive families where they start them even as early as 3 or 4. There are these networks of child pornography cults all over the world who turn these kids out at alarming numbers. It's huge business, even bigger than drugs right now. What is most horrible is that some of those children grow up to be the adult women that men think are "consenting." Many of these children (later, women) are so terrified that they will never say or do anything that may cause their perpetrators to become angry with them. So for instance, if you had reported the girl who sighed or the girl who looked away to the management, they might have gotten a beating. Their survival and financial burdens are eased every time they are able to smile and make you have a good time. But the good time is on one side only. And even, if you say, it is only a small percentage of these girls who are slaves, I would not want to take a chance that I might be abusing a slave, so if I were a man I would be like you and worry about it.

Yet even hardened pimps such as Maggie McNeill have nothing really to say about pleasure. When I asked her about her personal experiences and pleasures as a sex worker, all she could come up with is "money." That was it. I asked her detailed questions and she could not or would not answer them. Why? Because in order to be honest (she is anything but honest, which it's why it's ironic that her blog is called The Honest Courtesan), she would have to remember what it was really like and speak to humiliation and abuse. Have you ever wondered why the prostitutes who write about the horrors of prostitution have such detailed stories, and yet the happy hookers are so vague and only talk about how they are empowered and love sex, but without any details? I did an experiment and looked up interviews with prostitutes on YouTube. You find only two sorts of interviews there: women who are unhappy and whose lives are spiraling downward into despair, and women who say robot-like things about loving sex and men, while they are being filmed by a brothel owner, pornographer, madam, or pimp. So they are either ads for sex, or they are stories of despair.

So do the happy hookers exist? I would say, yes they do, but they are rare. They consist of only one class of sex worker - the kind that works for herself with no intermediaries, who can choose her own clients, who can charge enough so that she doesn't have to take too many clients a day or in a week, and who is absolutely positive that she was not coerced into doing it. She would also probably have to be white and middle class, college educated, over about the age of twenty-one or so, and lucky enough not to have encountered a dangerous misogynist. I actually know a couple of sex workers who fit into this category. They are not victims in any real sense, except that they have both bought into the idea that their only worth is in their sexuality. Personally, I find that this to be an abject choice. When a client is paying, a woman has to give up her rights to her own desires, especially the desire to refuse. It's an oxymoron actually - "choosing to forfeit the right to choose."

Then there is the problem of what "choice" really means. When I was a fifteen year old virgin, I "chose" to be raped by an older man that I knew because I was very drunk, he did not warn me what he was going to do, he was much stronger than me, and he was also drunk and he looked like he might go into a rage if I fought him. So I made the "choice" not to physically try to beat him off of me. But was this really a choice? My form of resistance was to shut my eyes and dissociate, like the prostitutes you go to. His reaction to this was to mock me for my prudery. I later found out that he went around deflowering all sorts of 14 and 15-year-old virgins - apparently it was his "thing." Later, I "chose" to work as a drink hostess in a sleazy bar, where men tried to coerce me into paid sex every night. I "chose" this job after pounding the pavement for two months applying for every menial job that was advertised, and never getting a single interview. It was a mild form of sex work, but it was nothing like any other job I ever had. It's getting paid to pretend that you are not a full human being but only exist for male pleasure, and the men in reality have nothing but contempt for you when you are available to them in this way. Rachel Moran is spot-on.

So, think of it this way: For a woman in prostitution who is being coerced either by pimps or poverty, each client is a rapist. That means the stakes are very different for you and for her. Rachel Moran asks for men to consider whether or not their sexual pleasure is more important than a woman's entire life. Apparently for many men it is.

Ah, I know who you are now! You are pbutterfly2000 a.k.a. Anna! I have now read your discussions with Maggie.

You say: It's getting paid to pretend that you are not a full human being but only exist for male pleasure, and the men in reality have nothing but contempt for you when you are available to them in this way. Rachel Moran is spot-on.

I think prostitutes probably don’t really like their work, and they indeed probably feel as if the clients have contempt for them. This is also a bit of a paradox because why have prostitutes so many different experiences? Why do some prostitutes say that clients are really nasty, try to grope the prostitutes without asking, or ask impertinent questions? While other prostitutes say that clients are generally friendly and considerate towards the prostitutes? (See for instance the research by Nick Mai)

Perhaps Jo Doezema and Metje Blaak can give an answer. I wrote about it in the following post:

Jo Doezema and Metje Blaak have worked as prostitutes and they fight for the rights of prostitutes. They defend prostitution. So what they think about their work is very telling. Jo Doezema has said: A lot of clients have the idea that their hours will be filled with sex of whatever sort they want. And because you can’t say in the beginning. “If you want this, this, and this, it’s going to cost this much, and this I don’t do,” you are kind of struggling the whole time to keep the clients from doing things you don’t want and try to keep him satisfied at the same time. (From Live sex acts – women performing erotic labor, Wendy Chapkis, 1997)

Metje Blaak said (translated from Dutch): Clients are just like children. They want to grab everything. You sometimes have to deal with them harshly. Especially when they start biting in your nipples and touch your genitals with their fingernails. You’ll have to break them this habit. I trained my regular customers in such a way that they were kind. Women who are lured here and forced into prostitution, don’t know well how to protect themselves. And she also said: There are whores who look down upon window prostitutes. They proudly say: I work at the Yab Yum. But it doesn’t matter at all. It’s just like cleaning the toilet. If you work in a three-star hotel or in a cafeteria, you are supposed to do the dirty work. Just look at the sick girls, the junkies. Up there come rich men who want to have a fuck for ten guilders. They want to completely humiliate such a girl and let her beg. (from the book Iemand moet het doen – over vuil werk en andere schone zaken, Joeri Boom, 1999)

I think this is just basically the truth about what prostitutes think of their work. Metje Blaak has said in her book Who the fuck is Daatje Smith that she finds prostitution the dirtiest profession in the world.

So probably this is what prostitutes also think of me, a dirty man with no manners, who despises women. But I have a big fantasy and I like to believe Nick Mai when he says that prostitutes say to him that clients are gentle and considerate. I wrote about Nick Mai on my blog by the way:

I just don’t know it anymore. Everything in prostitution is just a big paradox. It is very difficult to know for outsiders how it is like, and what is really happening. I think even the prostitutes themselves don’t know.

No, I don’t think the average age of entry is 15 years really. Perhaps it is true for certain groups, like certain castes in India and some Roma families whose women are basically predestined to become prostitutes. Women who belong to these families are even known to train their daughters to work in prostitution. So perhaps it is true for these women and girls.

Don’t believe everything you read. Maggie McNeill is right about that. Lots of research is really not research at all, but false information that people keep parroting from each other, and because so many people believe it, then it must be true. But if you look at the origins, where it started, you often find out that the claims are really bogus. It cannot be proved that human trafficking is the most profitable criminal industry behind drugs. No evidence at all.

Yes, Maggie McNeill didn't seriously respond to you. Perhaps she agrees you are right about your experiences. But for her it is irrelevant. Because in her opinion what you think about your work is your choice. She said to me if the woman who cuts my hair is also supposed to like her work? In her opinion it is normal. A part of life. Not liking your work is your right.

What you said about your experiences in the sleazy bar and how you felt about it could be true for prostitutes in general. Your experiences must have been nasty.

I just realized Maggie actually did respond to your question. It just was a short evasive answer: If you really believe that, you’re either hanging around with the wrong kind of men or projecting your preconceptions onto innocuous behavior. I’ve been to bed with a LOT of men, and danced naked in front of just as many, and in that extensive experience (and that of many other sex workers), men who “get off on” insulting or demeaning women appear much more often in neofeminist fantasy than in real life.

But she does tip a veil of what she experienced in prostitution: As I said in my column of August 16th, the average professional strongly dislikes having dirty, rough, bumpy fingers forcibly inserted (often without warning or lubrication) into her vagina, anus or even mouth. Even surgically clean fingers with nails trimmed down to the quick can be terribly uncomfortable, and once the man starts to wriggle them around violently it can become acutely painful. If you have a fetish for this please ask if it’s OK before doing it, and abide by whatever answer you get.

I think she experiences clients inserting fingers without warning, as just a fact of life. I think she believes that a prostitute just has to live with it.

I just noticed I made an error. I should say: "wean them off their habit" instead of "break them their habit". Is that correct? My English is not 100%. Somebody on twitter even said that I am hardly literate.

I have a few comments. My first point is, when people complain about Farley's statistics being inaccurate, they don't think about the fact that there are people who are never interviewed because they are locked away as slaves and not allowed to speak to anyone, let alone have it be known that they exist. This is where all of the real children are kept, those under the age of 13 or 14. When they average out the age of prostitutes, they can only count the ones they know about. The children aren't put out, because then the pimps would go to jail for life. They are kept hidden until they are old enough to go out in public. And what do you think these children would say if they were interviewed? You should read David McGowan's book PROGRAMMED TO KILL. There are lots of statistics there about child trafficking, and they are all from supported sources such as major newspapers. It will open your eyes to how big the problem really is.

My second point is, when I was raped at 15 I kept going over and over in my mind how I could have prevented it from happening. I shouldn't have trusted him...I shouldn't have gone over to his house alone...I shouldn't have gotten drunk...I should have bitten him and run away...I should never have become friends with an older man to begin with...and blah blah blah. So I was essentially blaming myself, and I spent years doing that. But the main problem was not me, it was him. The problem is that he felt entitled to use my body and didn't give a shit what I thought about it. The problem was that he found it perfectly acceptable to force himself on a young girl with no sexual experience, who was clearly having a bad time and in pain. If you are a young girl and you are around this type of man , you are going to get raped, period, unless somehow you have the kind of experience where you know exactly how to get away. This is because this man was continually prowling around for underaged girls to rape. I had a strange attachment to him because of the experience and tried to start a relationship with him when I was 18, but I was too old by then, too self-possessed. He only wants to force himself on a scared girl. That's how he gets his orgasm. So the problem is that there are men who want to steal in this way. He was a handsome guy with lots of charisma and talent, who had lots of adult women interested in him, but he didn't want them. He wanted to steal something. As I told Maggie, how can you train a man to behave who gets off on misbehaving?

It's the same problem with clients of prostitutes. They know the women don't want to be there but they don't care. They feel entitled to use their bodies whether or not the girl is okay with that. Every girl or woman is different in terms of how far she can handle that lack of humanity, but the lack of humanity is there just the same. It doesn't go away just because you are in denial of it or try to make the best of it, or even say you are "empowered" because of it. Clients of prostitutes constitute a special class of men who are turned on by rape and inequality and stealing something. Not all men are like this. It's true what some prostitutes say, that you can educate men to be kinder, but I think the education of men has to go way beyond that. In the bar where I worked, these issues were clearer to me than they would be to a woman who was actually selling her body. This is because I was selling conversation only, and yet still I was somehow a whore and they put their fingers in. But most of the abuse was verbal, because that's the way they abuse when they are not allowed to touch. It's all about power and pushing someone else down so you can be on top.

It also made it clear to me who was doing the abusing. The judgment of moralists and feminists? Sorry no, it was the misogynistic men who did all the harm. Maggie too lies about this. She screams at me, "feminists have been more abusive than any client. They call us human toilets! Let that sink in!" But do you know where that quote came from? From a john. HE said he uses women as human toilets. No feminist ever said that. And Maggie admits to being raped more than once. So feminists doing surveys which quote abusive men are more abusive than actual rapists? She is not living in reality. Because you know, the worst thing about rape is not the physical trauma, it's the knowledge that someone hates you enough to override your basic rights to your own body and violate you. It's the DESIRE to violate that is so awful. It wrecks your trust in humanity. And this is what johns do every time they visit a prostitute, even the ones who insist that they love it.

We live in a social world with other people, not just in our own minds. What happy hookers don't acknowledge is that structures have meaning outside of your own meaning. They think that changing the laws will change this meaning that's placed on whores, but they are wrong. It's men who despise whores, particularly the men who visit them, and changing the law doesn't change the deep emotional place that that hatred comes from.

It doesn't matter if the clients are gentle and considerate. A woman who has to have sex with a man she is not attracted to has to kill certain things within herself in order to tolerate it. So prostitution is about one person's pleasure only - the client's. The prostitute has the opposite experience - her sexuality is often killed permanently. We're taught that whores are so sexy, but in reality they are the least sexy of all women, because they have nothing of themselves to give besides their body. What's sexy about them to some men is that they are only partly human, or maybe like those realistic sex dolls. It's a one-sided experience, and my personal opinion is that this is why men despise whores. Men want a real women to really love them and share something with them, and they feel they can't get that in life, so they go to the one person who can't give it to them, and then despise her for that. I think many men are kind to whores and have the fantasy that these women love or like them or have enjoyed the experience. But only the body is there, only the survival instinct. There is no person there. As Rachel Moran says, it's a lie and the whore sells the lie.

Just one more thing: sex work is not like any other job. It's not like cleaning toilets, unless someone is calling you a whore and pulling your hair and ejaculating on you and enjoying your response of pain when you are cleaning a toilet.

I believe that 1.5% of people younger than 25 have been paid for sex, 2% of the boys, 1% of the girls. 2.382 boys and 2.439 girls were interviewed. I just read from the report: In total, four of every thousand boys and eight of every thousand girls have at any time been coerced or persuaded into having paid sex. Of the girls who have at any time been given money or some other reward 57% were persuaded or coerced into doing this, and 14% came up with the idea themselves. Of the boys 30% came up with the idea themselves and for 53% somebody else came up with the idea, but the boys found it pleasant. Among a minority of the boys (17%) the paid sex took place under force (not in the table).

That would mean that there are several thousands forced prostitutes who are younger than 25 in the Netherlands. There is no information about the age of entry.

You're right, there is no way of obtaining actual numbers. But you should read the first couple of chapters of David McGowan's book, and it will give you a better sense of how the whole thing works. You can find a free PDF somewhere if you search. His sources are major newspapers and police reports. It's all facts, and you can find out more about anything he claims by doing some research on your own. What you will find is that a lot of what people think has been "debunked" was in fact never debunked at all.

But this is not really the point - how many girls, how much coercion. We know that many are underaged and that many are coerced. You in fact understand the point already: that if you're not sure you're hurting anyone, it's better not to go.

Also, you say being a prostitute is like cleaning toilets while being sexually harassed. Well in my job where I was just a geisha I was sexually harassed. And already what was happening in my job was illegal. But women and girls in prostitution are more than just sexually harassed. It's possible that prostitutes who only give hand jobs and blow jobs have a job like cleaning toilets, but not those who are sexually stimulated themselves. The physical toll of having your body sexually stimulated many times a day is very hard on the body and on the spirit. We only have so much life energy, and it is depleted each time we have sex. There are those that like to go around and have sex all day, but those people are using up their life energy on purpose, usually because they have an unhealthy addiction which they know is self-destructive. And they choose who they have sex with. For her own self-preservation a woman working in prostitution therefore has to try to orgasm as little as possible, although sometimes I'm sure it happens involuntarily. Maggie's complaint of fingers inserted is about that too - about the stupidity of men who think they're giving a prostitute pleasure when they are being "considerate" and "thinking of her orgasm" by going down on her or trying to make sure she has an orgasm, as if she is their lover. I'm sure this has to be the very worst thing for a prostitute, clients purposefully overstimulating her clitorally or with fingers, or as Rachel says, hugging her or being tender and kind, because then you are causing chemicals to flow in her body which take a great toll on her and are only a further proof of the client's selfishness and lack of understanding of what she needs. The polite, friendly conversation and laughter that you offer the woman you go to is another sham, because you are not really being kind to her and don't really care about her. So it can only make her sad and bitter in the end. Most women in an entire lifetime will not suffer the severe toll from sex and men and their projections and impositions that prostitutes experience in a week. This includes the actual toxic chemicals that are released through sex hormones and fear. It's especially cruel to hug and stroke a prostitute after sex, because women release oxytocin very easily, and this creates feelings of attachment which they have to force themselves not to experience, making it especially hard for them to do their work. And you do it not for them, but to alleviate your own guilt. So you are only adding dishonesty and self-aggrandizement to the already toxic mix. If you think of prostitutes as human beings you will see that this is all obviously true.

Yes, but then people will say this is all just normal. Because often in a relationship one of the partners often wants more sex than the other. And often the other just gives in. In that case it becomes comparable to prostitution.

I think the answer is that the person with the higher sex drive, adapts to the person with the lower sex drive. More communication is necessary.

No, it's not like a relationship. Where do you come up with these ridiculous comparisons? The only way a prostitute's experience could be like a relationship is if a man required sex from his wife night and day and did not allow her to have any say ever in when, how, and what happened, making her in essence his slave, plus rented her out to his friends for sex. I'm sure that happens sometimes, but those are marriages we would find abusive and criminal in modern society. In fact, relationships like that are only formed by pimps! But a relationship where one partner sometimes gives in is not like prostitution.

I am saying the opposite of what Maggie says. She says that prostitution is fine because it's like a marriage. I am saying that prostitution is like slavery and is not like a marriage unless that marriage is also a form of slavery, and that slavery is always wrong.

You are taking this argument against oppression and saying that it means that sexuality is bad. But none of this inherently has anything to do with sexuality. Prostitution and pornography are forms of patriarchal oppression, and it's true that patriarchal oppression can also exist in marriages and in any kind of relationship, which is the point that Jeffreys is making. But it's the wrong approach to take Jeffreys' point too literally as a man, because then you are oppressing women in another way. For Jeffreys, her stance was a resistance to male aggression. For you, it's a furthering of a patriarchal agenda. There are two distinct forms of patriarchal oppression where sexuality is concerned: the first is to deny women's sexuality and to insist that sex is only for men. The second is to make all women into whores that exist only for men's pleasure. Just because you choose the first over the second (and sometimes also the second, when you visit prostitutes) does not make you on the side of the feminists.

About Me

I am a compulsive visitor of prostitutes and porn sites, and I desperately want to stop. I'm also known as Kris2 and @Donkey_Kris2 on twitter. I have studied the Dutch sex industry for years to find information about how to separate forced from voluntary prostitutes, and I share this information on my blog. My current position is that prostitution and porn are always violations of human rights. Prostitution is paid sexual harassment of poor and destitute people who have very limited means to prevent this harassment. Porn is sexual torture captured on film. I would brand myself as a socialist, a vegan, an abolitionist and as a sex-negative person.